“Spiritual/Secular; Hmong/American”: Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down and Kao Kalia Yang’s The Latehomecomer

Abstract

My fourth chapter uses postcolonial theory to highlight the complexity of ethnic spirituality in scientific North America. I examine the ways in which The Latehomecomer literally and metaphorically writes back to The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, and how the genres of family memoir and investigative journalism affect their respective texts. The chapter traces the trajectory from secular to spiritual in Fadiman’s text and the reverse movement in Yang’s to show how both paths resist containment by the narrow ethnographic discourse typically used to define Hmong-American experience.